The correlations of a child’s ability to read by grade 3 and proficiency in Algebra by grade 8 to late life success are well documented. These attributes cause a variety of midlife advantages. But are those the later life qualities that really matter? Instead, evaluate each child on the non-academic attributes of education. The correlates of non-academic traits with later adult life quality are far more important than we acknowledge. It is time to re-center our priorities of what constitutes a quality K-12 education and begin looking at core life values. Forget academic assessments, grade point averages, and class rankings.

What don’t we know? – Core life values

I usually open with “what do we know?” but that is the wrong question today. We know about the predictive value of a child’s academic achievements, or lack of achievement, on adults’ early and career-long earning power, incarceration rates, and socio-cultural status. Learning to read early and to think algebraically have predictive earning power. Yet we do not discuss the reality that these academic assets fade out over time. Early advantage does not translate into later life satisfaction. Early abilities to read and do algebra are not the attributes we use to measure a high-quality adult life.

What we do not measure and know much about, or at least we do not discuss, are the core life values that sustain a person throughout their life span. Ironically, these values are developmental, we see them early in childhood, and they continue throughout life. Also, they are measurable throughout the K-12 grade span, but not with tests. These values often are recorded in teacher notes and comments, but are eliminated from transcripts, the record that counts. They are lost to us because of our stubborn reliance on the numbers of test scores. Americans love hard data.

What are core life qualities? They are:

• Self-regulation, the capacity to monitor, manage, and adapt your internal mindset to meet new challenges, changing demands, and long-term goals. It is the ability to adjust to your life.
• Conscientiousness, a fundamental personality trait noted for orderliness, thoroughness, strong impulse control, goal-directed, and feeling a deep responsibility for one’s commitments.
• Perseverance, the ability to sustain a purposeful effort to achieve long-term and high-value goals over time, to weather setbacks, fatigue, and repeated failures.
• Self-control, the ability favors deferred gratification over immediate, the override of impulses, immediate urges, and temptations, and not follow others away from your priorities.
• Emotional stability, the psychological ability to keep a steady temperament, not dissolve under pressure, and control stress and anxiety.
• Empathy, the mental and emotional ability to perceive, understand, and share another person’s life experiences.
• Conflict resolution, the mental and emotional skills to navigate competing interests and to cause others to accept mutual agreements.
• Collaborative problem solving, the ability to be synergistic by causing others to consider a complex problem from different perspectives, use unanticipated skills, and reach solutions they could not reach individually.

These were labeled were labeled “soft skills” in the industrial age of America when the rugged individualist was a national hero. That era’s “hard skills” the time-proven academics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. In this century, core life qualities are the organizational skills that move people, production, and society from point A to point B.

One who believes that humankind walked on the moon because of the science of rocketry alone is ignorant of human work using all eight of the above core life qualities that put an astronaut there.

What should we know and value?

Core life values are not just an academic discussion; they correlate with the quality-of-life people feel and know after they have forgotten their high school gpa and class rank. The self-regulation and conscientiousness children learn and display in their K-12 years are among the most reliable psychometric predictors of adult physical health and lifespan.

Adults with developed qualities of self-control present lower rates of substance abuse, stress-related illness, midlife problems of high blood pressure, abnormal blood sugar, and obesity.

Adults who learned conscientiousness, perseverance, and emotional stability as a child have higher rates of financial security and career stability. They have lower rates of underemployment, longer job tenure, and steady financial growth, no matter their high school gpa or test scores.

Adults who have stronger K-12 school connections show greater emotional resilience during life’s ups and downs. They report increased later life satisfaction and lower issues with psychiatric distress.

And adults with developed qualities of empathy, conflict resolution, and cooperative problem solving also have fewer court appearances, lower rates of family break-ups, and are more civically involved.

The Big Duh!

The valedictorian/salutatorians, and honor roll students are typically honored at every high school graduation. Not mentioned are the graduates whose pictures in the class yearbook list them as the

• Friendliest
• Most likely to succeed
• Most school spirited
• Did the most for the class
• Most well-adjusted

and all the other “soft qualities” that distinguish classmates.

When the class gathers for its 50^th anniversary reunion, what will matter most – a classmates K-12 academic status or the high core life values that sustained them for half a century of living? I am betting on high core values.

We measure and honor the wrong attributes of an education.